It's time to look up your 20th-century ancestors in the Social
Security Death Index and request their Social Security number
applications (SS-5s) if you haven't already.

Threats
to close the Social Security Death Index are resurfacing with
a vengeance: President Obama's budget proposal would give the
Commissioner of Social Security license to grant or
deny access to the SSDI and our ancestors' SS-5 forms. It makes the
records' availability subject to a bureaucrat instead of the Freedom
of Information Act.

Other genealogy bloggers have expertly explained why there are more
effective ways to prevent tax fraud and protect the identities of
taxpayers, while also meeting the needs of genealogy hobbyists
and those who use Social Security records to identify survivors of
deceased servicemembers and unclaimed persons. Read more from:

I'll explain what the SSDI is and why it's important to genealogy:
The SSDI is a computerized file of deceased individuals whose deaths
have been reported to the Social Security Administration. It
contains mostly deaths from 1962 and later, though my
great-grandfather who died in 1949 is listed.

You can search the
SSDI on websites including FamilySearch.org
and Ancestry.com (which excludes
recent deaths) and order your ancestor's SS-5 for a fee from the
Social Security Administration under the Freedom of Information Act.

Once you find an ancestor in the SSDI, you can request his or her
SS-5, which requests parents' names, among other information. This
is the only record I've ever found giving my great-grandfather's
mother's name.

I have been told that ordering an ancestor's SS-5 these days will only get you a copy of the application with their ancestor's parents' names blacked out.

Karen Trout

Thursday, 18 April 2013 11:04:44 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Hi, Karen, it sounds like that's the case for SS-5 records of individuals born after 1940, with the reasoning that the parents could still be alive. See this article from Megan Smolenyak: http://megansmolenyak.posterous.com/social-security-administration-extends-foia-r

Diane

Monday, 03 June 2013 18:04:45 (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

Karen, you need proof of death to avoid that unless the person, or the parents, are old enough to be considered dead without proof. Unfortunately, you can't provide proof if you use the online ordering option.

Judy posted a good blog article several days ago on ordering a copy,

http://legalgenealogist.com/blog/2013/05/31/ordering-the-ss-5

Looks like they will accept an obit or police report as proof of death in addition to the standard death certificate.

My problem is trying to order my grandmother's since I am missing some key information.